Global Hawk Hits 5K: An Air Force’s RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle recently surpassed the 5,000 combat flying hour mark while flying a mission in the global war on terror, says Northrop Grumman. The UAV began flying combat missions in 2001, accumulating more than 233 missions to its credit. A single RQ-4 has flown 157 of those sorties.
In the face of Chinese war plans to disrupt U.S. command-and-control networks in the event of a conflict, the Air Force needs to focus less on its “connect everything” efforts and prepare its combat aviators to fight without a constant connection to higher-ups, according to a new report from AFA’s…